


Hey, Sister

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2693717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Dragon Age Drabbles starring Hawke in her various visages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

These focus primarily on warrior!hawke, but rogue!hawke and mage!hawke also appear. Please consider these character studies as opposed to anything with an actual plot.


	2. Warrior!Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When they bribe their way into Kirkwall

There’s blood and someone else’s skin (from when she yanked his head back when he tried to run) and the dirt and shame of the long journey under Hawke’s fingernails. She clenches her fist, eyes narrowing in the sun, sharp for any stragglers. It took long to kill them, her sword arm growing tired too quickly. The plate bore heavier upon her than grief for her brother, her father, their lost home.

The ship had made her weak.

"We could have gone to the smuggler." There’s reproach in Aveline’s voice as she cleans her hands then her sword with a dirty rag.

New dents grace her shield, dark with blood like the bruise over Hawke’s eye, already sore and tender.

Bethany does not heal it because the Templars swarm like locusts, ready to jump at the first sign of magic.

"You could have," Hawke agrees.

Bethany would have preferred the smugglers too—dealing and poisoning in shadows instead of slaughtering a group of men in broad daylight. Outvoted because Mother didn’t vote, and Carver would have gone with the smugglers too.

Yet they had followed her.

As they return to the mercenary, Hawke glimpses an elf in the shadows, across the way. Earlier, she had seen a child come to her, slipping something to her hand. Had Aveline or Bethany seen? She looks back at the dead men, and shrugs.

Even in Lothering, she’d had blood on her hands. Not even dark spawn blood. This wasn’t any different, not really.

It wouldn’t ever be different, not in a year, not in ten years.

Thank the Maker.


	3. Warrior!Hawke

Hawke bids goodbye to the friends she’s found trying to scrounge coin for the expedition—it’s going too slow. Too many mouths at home to feed.

She’s always hungry, even though she eats too much she thinks. But her plate is heavy, so is her sword. 

Fenris looks like he wants to invite her to stay for a few minutes in his mansion but she declines. She tells him she has to look after her sister. 

He doesn’t know she’s a mage, and she wants to keep it like that. 

Don’t trust anyone—that’s the first thing she learned when she came to Kirkwall and became a mercenary, and she only needed to learn the lesson once.

She had told the truth to Fenris, but when they stop at the Hanged Man so that Isabela and Varric can return to their rooms, they convince her to stay for a drink, and her words turn into a lie when she says yes, when she sees the sun is still hanging low, not quite dark, not quite light either though, and that means Uncle would still be awake, and Mother too. 

She drinks like she lies—too much, and when she notices that the windows of the Hanged Man are dark, she rises to her feet, hips bumping the table, spilling Isabela’s drink all over the wood and over her tunic and her hands. 

"Sorry," she says. 

Isabela isn’t angry though. She just arches her eyebrow. “You could make it up to me.”

"Say the word—and I’ll help you find the relic in exchange for one spilled beer," Hawke says because if she agrees to what Isabela isn’t saying, she’d never make it home tonight.

Isabela leans back in her seat. “Alright. I just might take you up on that.”

Hawke is drunk, but not drunk enough to stagger home, an invitation for any restless band on the streets to rob her purse. They had better just try anything—they’d learn, as everybody else always did.

She hadn’t needed Varric that one time. He’d just sped up the whole learning process for that poor unfortunate soul. 

She sits on the steps of her house instead of going in when she hears Bethany and Mother and Uncle, voices loud and blurred together as swollen rivers after a hard rain.

Hawke rests her forehead against her knees—waits for their voices to dim. She doesn’t try to strain her ears to hear what they’re arguing about. They’re arguing about their lost fortune, their good for nothing uncle, mother railing about how her children had been sold into servitude—like she was the one with blood on her hands—and who knew what Bethany was arguing about—probably that Hawke still hadn’t come back and why wouldn’t they just let her go looking for her because what if she was in trouble (like Hawke ever got herself into trouble she couldn’t get herself out of again).

Yelling no at her was probably the only thing that the three of them agreed on.

Hawke’s head swam, warning her that a hangover would arrive in the morning like the tide.

Eventually, she heard no more voices, and she picked herself up, opening the door quietly. 

A flare of flame smoked from the corner, and there was Bethany, cradling it in her palm even though she knew Hawke hated it when she did that, when she was so cavalier about it. 

Anybody could see. 

"Can’t you light a lamp or something?" Hawke says, looking at the letters that had come for her while she had been gone, but there was only one and she couldn’t pretend to read it forever.

Her reading wasn’t that good, but Bethany knew it wasn’t that bad either.

"Can you not come home smelling like drink?" Bethany demands, flexing her fist, dousing the flame, only for her to call it to the nearby lamp. 

Hawke flinches. “I could.”

"You’ve been gone for days," Bethany hisses. "You’ve been leaving me here for days with those two, always arguing, always at each other’s necks! Because mother won’t let me out unless I’m with you so that you can protect me from the big bad templars and you never let me come with you."

Hawke strips her gauntlets from her hand. Her skin is calloused, and scraped raw from when she had to finish a fight with her fist instead of her sword. 

Her hands stink from sweat, from blood. 

"Running around in the streets with a staff strapped to your back—a brilliant way to tell the templars, hey look at me I’m a mage running wild doing crime with my mercenary sister. I don’t think that’d go over well, do you?"

"I was a mercenary too," Bethany says. 

"Now you’re not. You should be glad." Hawke struggles with the fastenings on her breastplate, fingers numb with drink and cold and fatigue. 

"Let me help you with that," Bethany says.

Hawke swaps her hands away.

"Come on," Bethany says. "Don’t act like you’re five years old. You’re the eldest, why do you have to be like this? Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid if I touch you you’re going to get frostbite or something?"

"I’m not afraid," Hawke says. She raises her hands like she was surrendering. "Do whatever you want."

Bethany rolls her eyes, but when she reaches for the fastenings, Hawke remains very still. “Don’t you remember when we first came here? It was just us—us and Aveline, I suppose. I was with you all the time, right by your side.”

"And how we ducked in mucky dark alleys when the roving templars roved too close?" Hawke says. "How could I forget your onion breath."

Bethany stiffens, but she lifts the breastplate from Hawke and they rest it against the wall. Hawke’s thin cotton shirt is stiff with sweat. 

Bruises pepper her collarbone, and there’s another one on her back that causes her to wince when she pulls the shirt off too, and Bethany stares at her bare skin, her hand lingering over the bruised flesh and even though Hawke can’t see, she can feel the thrum of heat between her palm and the hurt and she ducks away.

"I can heal that," Bethany says.

"And then people will ask me, Hawke what happened to your bruises, and then rumors get around and then templars knock on our door and take you away and mother demands me why I didn’t do anything to stop it and if I’m going to stop them from tearing the whole family apart."

Bethany stands aside, her hands folded tightly across her chest as she stares into the fire. “That won’t happen.”

Hawke shakes her head. 

"Let me come with you," she says. "I won’t wear a staff. I won’t use spells. I know how to fight."

Hawke slides against the wall, the drink hazing her mind, making her eyelids heavy. Bethany should have gone to bed, shouldn’t have waited for her to come home weak and vulnerable to even indulge this conversation. But there was no yelling at her to shut up, lest that  wake their mother, their uncle, who would give her grief in turn for being mean even if they would side with her eventually.

"Well, I’m currently journeying with a pirate without a ship. A dwarf who’s so handy with a bow it’s probably a good thing he’s not human or elven since everybody knows that dwarves can’t be mages. Then there’s Fenris, a warrior who’s skilled with a sword even though he couldn’t best me in a duel. Probably. But it’s not like I’m going to ask him." She licks her lips, does not mention Anders or Merrill since Bethany would want to scurry off to the Alienage and then to Darktown and then what, and then what, have her end up like Anders’ friend he failed to save?

No thank you.

"They sound lovely," Bethany says. "I would love to meet your friends."

This time Hawke’s eyes snap open, and she eyes Bethany. “They’d also consider you a liability. Besides, Fenris was enslaved by Tavinter mages. He is not their friend, and I don’t think you’d find him so lovely anymore once you saw how he—” she remembers the way Fenris’ hand had plunged through bone and flesh. 

Bethany scoffs. “Well, if he can handle you helping apostates out of the city I’m sure that he can handle me.”

Hawke stares at her knee. Remembers the boy. Or tries to. Fey something? Something that started with an F. How she’d sent him packing to the Circle.

"Maker take you," Bethany says. "You’re not even helping the apostates anymore, are you?" She paces in front of the dying fire, her fingers clutching at her skin. "You’re turning them over to the templars! That’s the real reason you haven’t let me come with you, because you knew I’d stop you!"

"They’re safer from the demons in the circle, and we’re safer from them," Hawke says.

"All I hear is that eventually you’re going to decide that I’m too much of a risk, and that you’re going to turn me in." Bethany rounds on her, her eyes flashing, but Hawke doesn’t know if it’s from the strange cast of the fire light or the magic within her. "All this time, we’ve feared the templars out here, but maybe we were looking too far abroad."

"You’re right," Hawke says. "After what Uncle did to mother, I’ve been afraid of the same thing, since I certainly, I would not turn on my own  sister." Her voice is low, rasping through the hollow lump in her throat. "This was a job. It was business. It wasn’t personal."

"Of course it’s personal!" Bethany cries out, and this time she comes close to Hawke, bending down on her knees so that they’re face to face—or they would, if Hawke did not turn away. "I can feel the lyrium on you! I’ve seen you watching the recruits train—I know you know what they know, that you’re training how they train. You’re a templar in everything but name."

"You don’t know what I’ve had to deal with, what I’ve seen," Hawke says. "I’m not going to feel guilty protecting myself from mages who are abominations, who are blood mages."

Bethany had been too young to remember Father, but Hawke does remember Father as clear as she remembers the blood mage from the Blooming Rose, the one who’d almost made her slit her own throat. 

Bethany wouldn’t understand. 

Bethany leaned back on her heels, arms folded. “I won’t go to the circle, no matter how many templar tricks you teach yourself.”

"Fine. Because I’m not going to ask you to, and I’m not going to drag you there either." Hawke forces herself to look at Bethany, to smile at her like they were still girls. "See, we’re on the same side."

"No we’re not," Bethany says. "Not really. I could be that mage you turned over if we weren’t sisters."

Hawke sighs, scrubs her palm through her razed short hair. “Being sisters isn’t enough for you?”

Bethany frowns, and rises to her feet, but lets the question hang. “You’re going to eat with us tomorrow at least?”

"Wouldn’t miss it for the world," Hawke says. "Gruel. My absolute favorite."

"Will you be leaving?" 

"Yeah. I need to—" find a bunch of blood mages hiding in the dirtiest parts of the city. "—need to do some extra work for Meeran. Nothing I can’t handle by myself." 

"So you won’t be needing company then?" Bethany’s face falls. 

"Look," Hawke says. "I’m not even asking any of the others to join me. Aveline’s busy. Isabela has her stuff to do. Same with the others."

"So that means I could come," Bethany says, deliberately ignoring the part where this hypothetical job was so easy Hawke could do it with her arm tied around her back. 

"We’ll see," Hawke says.

"You promise? You’re not just saying that to shut me up?" Bethany says. "It’ll be like we’re sisters again. Maybe we could go out and find something fun to do out on the town, what do you say?"

"I promise I’ll think about it," Hawke says. "Especially since it sounds kind of fun." 

But the next morning, Hawke says no, and Bethany watches her sister disappear around the corner, not even checking in with Meeran like they had always done in the past, and let the curtain fall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juna messaged me a headcanon about Hawke becoming a templar after their father was possessed and surprise surprise I liked it a lot. <3


	4. Warrior!Hawke

The way that Fenris finds out about Bethany (and then of course Merrill and Anders) still makes Hawke flush bright with shame and guilt.

They’re all at the Hanged Man, clustered around their table, the one that others will rise and give up to them when their shadows grace the hard stone floors. 

She likes it, when she’s honest, but more often she tells them not to bother and they always, always bother to get out of her way.

It doesn’t even happen when they’re drunk. Not even when a Mage attempts to buy a drink without success.

It happens when Varric looks at Hawke like she should have intervened, and said, “I’d like to see the bartender try that trick when Bethany’s around.”

She kicks the dwarf under the table, but he’s nimble, he's quick, and his feet dance out of the way.

"Is this Bethany a friend of mages?" Fenris voice comes slow, becalmed, but Hawke can see the way his muscles tense under the skin.

"Friend to mages!" Varric laughs. "Considering she’s an apostate—"

Hawke’s palm lashes swift and sure against his cheek. “Have you forgotten we are not alone? That anyone of these eavesdroppers could go to a Templar?”

Fenris has risen to his feet, face inscrutable. “I wish you had seen fit to tell me of this. Excuse me, I need some fresh air.”

"He didn’t know?" Varric says in a low breath as he watched Fenris wind his way through the crowd. "What were you thinking?"

"That the fewer who knew, the better. Now I have to fix this mess, thanks."

"You shouldn’t be ashamed of her," Varric says before she’s even up from the table. "It’s not her fault."

"I’m not. But you’re a dwarf, and you won’t understand."

"Oh sure—that old card. Try something better, Hawke!"

She ignores Varric, and finds Fenris leaning against the Hanged Man in a manner similar to the first time they met.

He doesn’t look at her when he says, “Mages are dangerous.”

"So am I, and I am no Mage."

"You should have told me." He pushes himself from the building, comes closer to her and looks down on her because she’s shorter than him.

"I’m sure it’s obvious why I did not. Is this going to be a problem?"

"Not unless she exercises blood magic or becomes possessed."

Hawke finds herself laughing, and hates it. “She hates both those things. She would never.”

"For now. Anything else I should know?"

Hawke considers. She’s not good at lying, never has been. Besides, they were all going to have to work together sometime. “Merrill is a blood Mage of the Dalish. Anders a Mage formerly a grey warden, currently possessed by a spirit of justice.”

"I see," comes Fenris’ dry reply. "And you trust them?"

She shrugs. “I need them.”

"And do you trust yourself?"

She’s tempted to say she’s not consuming lyrium for the taste. “Of course I do.”

"Very well." He turns away but pauses for an instant. "But I’ll be watching."

Of that she had no doubt, and if it ever came to it (which it wouldn’t but if it did) she trusted him to do what she could not.


	5. Warrior!Hawke

Fortunately, there was a long journey ahead of them before returning to Kirkwall.

Unfortunately, the roads were quiet.

Few dark spawn disturbed the peace, leaving Hawke to her thoughts, which flooded through her like the horde itself. She’s glad that Aveline had been unable to accompany them, busy with her new post. She would have wanted to talk about Wesley and Bethany as if they were the same, but that wasn’t true.

She should have brought Anders—the former grey warden. It had made so much sense to leave him behind—a possessed Mage? Anything could have happened.

Hadn’t he said that he wouldn’t blame them for not wanting him by their side? He hadn’t even wanted to return to the roads! It had seemed like the best decision and yet —

Anything had happened.

She had been too scared to bring him along. She could tell anyone who asked that it had been for that reason or this reason, but she had feared the spirit within him, the one fierce as any demon. She had been foolish. This was all her fault.

Bethany could have been a warden instead of dead. Saved from the dark spawn, saved from the circle, saved from all but exile.

She’s glad when Isabela asks for a rest so she can take off her long boots and shake out the pebbles.

They stones skitter across the rocks, and her skin crawls.

She thinks that Varric asks her how she’s holding up but it’s too much to answer—she’s never been good with words and she needs to save what few she has for her mother.

They arrive home in time. I told you, her mother cries from the floor, I told you to leave her behind. I told you to take care of her! If you had only listened to me.

Hawke says nothing. She wants to say she did what she could, but the words have proven to be falsehoods. Looking back, she can see that now.

She cannot say them in good faith.

How could you do this to me, her mother cries.

Hawke does not know.


	6. Mage!Hawke

Fenris was waiting for Hawke when she returned from the caves. His head was bowed, elbows on his knees.

She hesitated in the doorway before unstrapping the staff from her back , thick with frost at her touch, and let it rest against the wall. The ice melted, rivulets of water falling down a length of wood.

He was looking at her now, waiting.

In retrospect, asking him if he wanted to talk about what had happened had been the wrong thing to say—she shook her head, tried to put it out of mind, and to remember for next time.

He apologized for taking his anger out on her, and she told him there was no need to.

They stood in awkward silence—then turning away, he told her how he had been tormented by the Mage.

Hawke’s glad she’s dead.

She asked about his sister because she’d help if he wanted, and he asked, what would you have me do?

As he told her about the hate and the rage that they put in him, she didn’t know what he should do, if anything, or what she should do if anything.

She took a seat on one of their fine chairs and listened until he tired of speaking. He stood in the center of the room, a stark shadow against the orange glow of the fire.

His eyes were tired, his skin lined with care, voice hoarse.

After a few minutes, he took the seat beside her, cupping his face in his hand.

The silence was awkward. She remembered that she hadn’t eaten anything, and Fenris probably hadn’t either. “You hungry?”

He rolled her eyes at her.

"We’ve got a nice duck just waiting to be cooked. And wine. If you’re up for it. Neighbor."

She guessed he was since he nodded and followed her to the kitchen, where they ate and drank without speaking until weariness overcame them and they fell asleep with their cheeks pressed against the smooth wood of the table, each of them at opposite ends.

When she woke, he was gone.


	7. Mage!Hawke

Hawke frowned a little when she read Orsino’s note. Gift from the Circle? That couldn’t be good. 

She slit the package open with the small knife she kept strapped her waist, and found a robe.

A mage’s robe. Soft, colorful like some kind of peacock. 

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—still wearing that pirate’s outfit she’d found somewhere. Three years later, too many battles to count, it was the worse for wear. It wasn’t black anymore, just battle-stained, travel-stained, and possibly even tavern-stained. There were holes where the cloth was worn through—and yet

She glanced down at the robe again.

She’d never worn one of these. It was a death sentence to look like a mage as an apostate. Even the staff strapped to her back, blades hammered into the top, didn’t look like a magister’s weapon, but a makeshift spear or scythe belonging to someone without the coin or skill to forge their own. 

She’d worn the garb of rogues—light, supple cloths that would help her run from quick-footed, hard-hitting warriors—and absolutely nothing that would betray her as a mage.

But now the the Knight-Commander knew, had seen her practicing magic. 

And even now, the Knight-Commander was tightening her grip around the mages in Kirkwall, and even as Champion of Kirkwall, she could do nothing about it. 

Orsino obviously wanted her to be a mage openly now—none of this hiding in the open amidst a restless throng. 

He wanted everyone to know that the Champion of Kirkwall wasn’t just someone who had bested the Arishok, but that that someone had been a mage, who was no longer afraid to hide as an apostate.

A mage that had the power to no longer hide as an apostate.

She felt the old fear creep back, and the robe shook in her hands.

But maybe Orsino was right. 

Slowly, she undid the buttons of her black outfit. It slipped off as easily as she had slipped into it.

The robe was suffocating after the lightness of her tunic. It brushed the floor, caught at her knees.

She no longer saw a rogue or scoundrel when she looked into the mirror.

A mage stood, peering back at her from the glass.


	8. Rogue!Hawke

i miss you, bethany. sometimes i think i should have taken you in the dark roads, but then i think you’d still somehow leave me.

i hope the circle is treating you well.

one day, i’m going to come visit you. i know you can’t just drop in, but then, i don’t think they’d expect me to scale their tower and jump in through a window.

i’ve gotten pretty good at that.

actually, you wouldn’t believe it. you remember isabela? well, she’s still here—though, i’m afraid things are a little bit awkward between us sometimes my mouth does tend to run like a brook you know how it is—and one time we were drinking at the hanged man and i told her my plan to visit you, you know, and she wanted to know how i intended to do that so i told her my grand plan about scaling the tower to see you and possibly to save you if you were up for a ride down on my shoulders, and she dared me to scale the tavern even though we were both quite drunk, so obviously i met her challenge and well let’s just say i was little sore walking for a few days because i slipped and fell but that won’t happen when i come for you i promise because we’ll do all our drinking afterwards, after you’re gone and the templars find your bed empty and unmade. 

when i come, tell me which templars are giving you a hard time so that we can hide their swords. i’d like to see them bully mages about without their fine weapons to back them up.

or maybe you could curse them into toads or frogs and things. or spineless little worms for some ironic justice. then i’ll squish them with my boot.

i don’t even know why i bother writing these letters. i know you won’t receive them, and i know i can’t send them especially with shit like this in them why i’d be arrested and then where’d you be when you came back.

i’m putting them in a drawer, all tied together, so that when i do visit the Circle in the dead of night, you can read them on your first night of freedom and think, do i or do i not have the best sister one could only hope for.

i’m coming for you bethany as soon as kirkwall gives me a spare moment between missing apostate mages, murdered women, and the qunari. 

for some people think that i’m their problem-solver! it’s amazing—remember when they wouldn’t give us a second look when we lived in lowtown? and now with the mansion and everything it’s an entirely different story?

i love you, bethany. you’ve not seen the estate yet, but you’re going to love it. 


	9. Rogue!Hawke

"So how many dogs do you need to see someone about?" Hawke asked, lazily.

Isabela and she were both sprawled on Hawke’s wide bed, but not too close because of the heat.

"Dogs? What are you talking about?"

Hawke rolled over on her side, jaw cupped in her hand. “Every time I go to the Qunari compound you slip off saying you need to see a man about a dog. You must have a whole litter by now.”

Isabela sat up straight, her bare feet firm on the floor. “Oh.”

Even though it was still hot, the temperature dropped between them, colder than even when Isabela had said not to confuse this with feelings. “If you don’t like the qunari or are scared of them then that’s fine I’m hardly one to judge. The Templars scare the piss out of me.”

"I’m not afraid," Isabela said, "and in fact I’d rather not talk about it."

Hawke nodded. “Alright.” She slipped behind Isabela and leaned in close, “Shall we talk instead about how pretty your laugh is when I go down on you?”

But Isabela pulled away. “Maybe another time, Hawke. I think what I need is a drink at the Hanged Man. You in?”

"You don’t need to ask me twice."

They stepped out together, walking so close together their hands nearly touched but not quite.

 


	10. Rogue!Hawke

Hawke still caught herself twirling her knives, watching the blades flash in the sun, blinding stars made of daylight.

It drew every eye to her. Nobles sniffed and frowned at her, the ferelden rogue in her worn leathers, brown skin tanned dark from the sun, red hair cropped short against the nape of her neck.

She flashed a grin at them, and they clutched their purses, muttering that they thought the ferelden refugees were supposed to be in Lowtown.

She wasn’t a rogue that skulked in the shadows. She charged forward, brash and bright, played dirty tricks, and won every fight.

Everybody remembered her. They were supposed to. The way her brown eyes laughed when she threw sand in their eyes. The flex of her calf as she tripped them to their knees, elbow driving into their neck, foot pushing them head over heels, stunned and breathless, enraged that a girl dancing in her leather shoes and leather fringed skirts had bested them.

They described her eyes and hair and skin. Yes, she had a tattoo around her eye. No, draw her with a sneer around her lips.

Was she alone?

The question gave them pause. Had she been alone? No, they were almost sure she hadn’t been.

Yet all they could remember was her, her laughter, the way she shook their purses, coins jangling.

They stole, they said. No, she tore the arms off ogres and you better watch it before she tears yours off too.

What shit, they said, and had artists alter the shape of her eyes, the jut of her jaw.

And her companion? A girl they thought. Maybe an old woman with a walking stick.

They never remembered Bethany which was the point of the whole thing.

Hawke put her daggers away across her back and smiled.


	11. Rogue!Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke x Isabela

Hawke looked for Isabela in the Hanged Man, but she was not there. She wasn’t drinking at the bar or playing cards at the table, cheating and swindling through drunken pockets, and she wasn’t upstairs in the rooms either, laughing her good-time laugh.

The ship—the one she’d carved from the trees the spiders spun their webs, the fallen branches she’d tripped over on the Sundermount—hung heavy in the small pouch belted at her waist even though it was light, the wood creamy and bright in her hands, shaped under the blade of the knife she usually kept sheathed at the small of her back. 

So it wasn’t a fleet. So it wasn’t a real pirate ship scudding the waves against a bracing wind, captain at the help, wind whipping her hair—

So it wasn’t any of those things, but predictably the demon had welched on the deal and wasn’t that just typical.

Didn’t need to be a mage to expect that one.

Hawke wandered from Lowtown, down the center of the streets. The guard followed her with their eye, and she shot them cocky salutes that sent their lips sneering in disgust probably because they were stuck in barracks and a lowlife like her got an estate.

She threw her head back and laughed.

The Docks welcomed her with the tang of salt and brine. She breathed it in, deep in her lungs until she coughed. The qunari guarding the entrance of the compound did not register her presence, and she wondered if he also breathed deep, hoping to catch a whiff of home, of Par Vollen.

She remembered when she’d been huddled in the hull of the ship that brought them from home that she’d stood on those same docks, hoping to see land that wasn’t an island again, some promise that it was still there, that it still waited for her.

Dropping winks toward the qunari guards she slipped through the streets until the sea sparked from the setting sun, until the wooden docks stretched before her boots and, at the edge of the last one, a small figure sat, someone with a blue scarf tied around her hair.

Isabela had taken off her boots, and they lay folded over beside her. Mud and salt caked the soles. Her legs dangled over the edge of the dock, her feet dipped in the water, turning slow figure eights so that the water lapped at her calves.

She did not turn when Hawke approached. “How’d you know I was here?” she said.

"You told me." Hawke pulled her own boots and joined Isabela. The water was warm. 

"I never," Isabela said.

"But you did. You said, like a week ago, that you came out here sometimes to just look at the water." 

Isabela looked at her for the first time. “You remembered that?”

"Got a mind like a steel trap," Hawke said, tapping her temple with her gloved hand. "Gotta, in our line of work." 

"I shouldn’t have listened to the demon," Isabela said. "But I just—I’d do anything—to have my ship back, to be out on the water again. You understand that, don’t you? I’m not like you, Hawke. I’m not noble—not in my lands, not in my morals."

Hawke laughed, her head thrown back, the last of the sun in her eyes. “You seem to think that I’m a good person, and that you’re a bad person. It’s not true, you know.” She sucked on her teeth. “I was a smuggler. I was a thief. I’m still a thief. I throw sand in people’s eyes and I kick ‘em when they’re down. Kicked a man bloody, once. That noble to you?” 

"Remind me to never challenge you to a duel," Isabela said.

"Whatever it takes to win." Hawke slung her arm around Isabela’s tense shoulders as her foot under the water touched the fine bone of her ankle. "We’ve lost too much to take anymore just sitting down, you know? So I get it. And you know—we’re friends." She raised her hand, as Isabela began to protest. "I won’t complicate things with mushy feelings, but I got your back, Isabela, I hope you know that." With her free hand, she undid her satchel and found the ship she carved. "I even got you a ship." 

She held the carved figure towards Isabela, who simply stared at it.

"It’s not exactly sea worthy, but I think it’ll do, even if it’s doesn’t live up to the demon’s promises. But inside," Hawke added, "there’s a carving of you, issuing orders, men hanging onto your every word, to the word of their Captain Isabela." 

Isabela’s hands closed over the toy, tips of her long fingers brushing against Hawke’s.

"Thank you," she said, her voice hoarse. "You didn’t have to though." Her hand still over the ship, still in Hawke’s, she leaned over and kissed her cheek, first one and then the other. 

And Hawke kissed her back.


	12. Warrior!Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hawke x fenris

Fenris is there when you return, dirty with the blood of slavers and mages. You stink, reek, of gore. 

So does he.

He tries to apologize for his attitude, and you say nothing. Held in the armored palm of the mercenary for a year, you know it’s not even a shadow, not even an echo, of what Fenris experienced, and yet your anger burned, hot enough for everyone you knew (even Bethany) to tell you to let it go, to just let it go.

You can’t let it go.

You don’t know how.

You listen. You’re so close to each other. 

You want to speak, but you don’t know what to say. You touch his shoulder, lightly, and he glows blue and has you on the wall. You know how to defend yourself if he does to you what he did to that mage. You hold very still, not moving even in surrender.

You kiss instead.

You don’t know why, but it’s better than talking. 

Until it’s over. Then it’s awkwardness, and he rises from the bed and you feel naked instead of nude under the covers. You pull them up to cover yourself.

He can’t do this, he says.

You nod.

You don’t say that you care for him because it doesn’t matter—you ask if he wants to end it, and he walks away.

You understand.

Of course you understand.

You don’t understand why he bears the scrap of scarlet you tore from your armor to bind a minor wound he suffered. It’s been washed, and the wound is healed. It should have been thrown away, yet there it is, bright and searing red, against the black of his plate.

You hate it.

~*~

You don’t tell Fenris when Anders asks you for aid. He wouldn’t want to come and you don’t want to hear it.

You can’t say that all mages need to die, because Bethany was a mage, and she is dead, and you think about her sometimes, at night when you can’t sleep, even with the whiskey you have at your disposal, at your command, even when Isabela plies you with it like it’s a game, the only game worth playing because it ends with you passed out dead drunk, the brain in your head finally stopped from thinking about Father and how yours was the last face he ever saw, from Bethany, and how yours was the last face she ever saw as well.

Keep it up, Hawke, you tell yourself.

Soon, you’ll have no family left, just the dried up stump of a tree in a barren land.

So no, you don’t tell Fenris you’re helping Anders because you really don’t want to hear it.

But you make sure that Anders isn’t looking when you fell the lyrium smugglers slumming in the secret caves. You pick their pockets because they’re dead and don’t need anything—but you need, you do, you need so little, and so much. The lyrium slips into your own pockets like they belong there.

Anders voice holds scorn for the templars and their dependency. 

That’s alright. There’s plenty of scorn in your voice for him, and the abomination he carries in his flesh.

Plenty to go around.

~*~

When Anders kills that mage girl, you can’t stop him. It’s too fast, and you curse your muscles. You think that could have been Bethany. You think he’s an abomination. You wonder if you could kill him, like you’ve killed another mage. 

You want to.

You can’t. 

There are too many people present. There’s Isabela, and you don’t want her to look at you like that.

There’s Merrill, who dabbles in blood magic.

You think you might have to kill her too one day.

You don’t want to think about it.

Anders escapes in the pause as your mind and body try to figure out what to do.

In Darktown, you can’t kill him. He’s healed too many people

You tell him to leave.

He leaves.

You wonder how you live in a world where Anders breathes and your sister doesn’t.

You don’t tell Fenris.

You’re not speaking that much anyway.


End file.
